As heaven relented with the watery bow.”
Deep in the sufferer’s nature springs the desire to feel woman’s hand binding his wound or wiping his brow, and to hear soft words dropping from a woman’s lips.
“Ask the poor pilgrim, on this convex cast,
His grizzled locks distorted in the blast;
Ask him what accents soothe, what hand bestows
The cordial beverage, raiment, and repose?
Oh! he will dart a spark of ardent flame,
And clasp his tremulous hands, and woman name.”
The most beautiful features in human nature, as well as the most heroic elements of character, are called up and brought into action by sympathy. The women, who, during the late war, smoothed the pillow of the sick soldier in the hospital, have as high a place to-day in the esteem and affection of the nation as the heroes who turned the tide of battle on the heights of Alma and amid the hills of Balaklava. In thoughtless flattery, woman is sometimes called an angel; but an angel, in sober truth, she is,—a messenger sent by God to assuage the sorrows of humanity. Through sympathy, she lives in high communion with the great workers and sufferers of the past, and imbibes the spirit which stimulated and sustained them.
“O woman! in our hours of ease,